The 'poor door' contradiction

Opposing integration at public-housing projects while demanding it everywhere else is counterproductive.

Affordable-housing advocates are being vexed by two seemingly unrelated issues. They lament that New York City Housing Authority projects are crumbling and that there's no money to fix them. And they complain about tax breaks going to mixed-income apartment complexes with separate entrances for the subsidized tenants.

But the criticism entails a contradiction that advocates and elected officials must come to grips with if the city is to fashion a coherent affordable-housing policy.

Champions of public housing insist that not a square inch of NYCHA land be used for market-rate apartments, which would generate revenue to build and repair affordable units on authority sites. Yet these defenders of 100% low-income housing on public land demand a perfectly communal mix of incomes everywhere else.

Where to begin? Start with concentrating the poor into isolated campuses of high-rises with no street grid and no (legal) commercial activity: This has failed miserably. The projects are known for crime, unemployment, budget deficits and dilapidation, not to mention hopelessness. And they have not sated the demand for affordable housing.

Then, consider the tax-abatement reform that brought us the so-called "poor doors": It was designed by the same folks who now bemoan the separate entrances. Crafted by Assembly Democrats in consultation with affordable-housing advocates, the reform expanded the areas in the city where builders have to create affordable units to qualify for property-tax breaks—and required those cheaper units to be on site. (The abatement program previously allowed the affordable dwellings to be elsewhere.) The point was to usher poor families into neighborhoods with good schools, transit, jobs and safety so they could escape the cycle of poverty. It was not to give them subsidized Central Park views, fancy lobbies, spas and rooftop swimming pools.

Banning separate entrances would reduce projects' profits and thus curtail the creation of affordable units in thriving neighborhoods. It would be criminal not to build quality housing for thousands of poor families so that a handful might get apartments in luxury buildings.

By the same token, it makes no sense to forbid market-rate dwellings at NYCHA sites. The agency's tenants desperately need the repairs that these apartments would pay for as well as the shared advocacy for better schools, parks and security that wealthier residents would bring.

Opposing integration at public-housing projects while demanding it at private ones is not just contradictory. It's counterproductive.

wrote on 09/03/14 at 2:58 PM

The logic of this editorial reduces the issue of "poor doors" to a financial question. Neither the use of public housing for market rate housing, nor the question of how to integrate with dignity and care for all in more upscale development, is so completely about the fiscal picture. It also matters not one whit who devised the new rules that are now being blamed for creating the choice of "poor doors."

Perhaps one cannot realistically expect multi-million dollar purchasers to live and enter the same door as a family living on $35,000 or less, but given the desperate need for better and more affordable housing for so many, this debate must surely have better solutions than separate entrances. As for not providing full amenities to the poor in these buildings, why not consider the possibility that many, many New Yorkers would be happy to have good housing at a decent price without luxury amenities. Can no one build for those folks with appropriate set asides for lower income? There are co-ops in many parts of the City where people live together with a wide mixture of incomes and no one goes ballistic over sharing the same doors.

wrote on 09/03/14 at 3:13 PM

It's not often I agree with a Crain's editorial. This one I definitely do. The "poor door" controversy is a contrived "issue" brought up by the newly elected progressives who see it as defending with the 99% and as a metaphor for income inequality. It is neither. (Full disclosure: I am a progressive through and through and supported Bill D. for mayor). The idea of different levels of amenity for differing levels of cost makes sense to everyone, except the "poor door" folks. Imagine that you paid $100 to fly to Florida, which is cheaper than bus fare, and complaining that you didn't get a glass of wine when you first sit down like in Business Class. As a progressive, I find the whole issue embarrassing.

wrote on 09/03/14 at 5:14 PM

This is a facinating idea but if taken on it has to be done with extreme care and transparency, two things in very short supply when it comes to municiple projects. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who feels that the NYCHA housing developments are a success in any social sense. While built with all good intentions and still badly needed, they are the epitome of "ghetto" neighborhoods, high crime, isolated and by and large racially segregated. The idea of breaking up these housing projects and expanding the base of people living in them is laudable but as soon as it's labelled a "give away" to developers or special interests it will be dead. As soon as it becomes gentrification and displaces a single current resident, it's failed. I applaud Crain's fowarding this idea, it shows true progressive thinking, rather than just Progressive labeling.

wrote on 09/03/14 at 7:46 PM

Let's please clear up a basic misconception: The affordable housing in new residential buildings is NOT for "poor" families but for middle-income residents who can afford a rent that's lower than market-rate but still far above what a poverty-level tenant can pay. These affordable apartments are for the likes of teachers, social workers, firefighters, writers, nurses, bus drivers and other people in perfectly respectable, even honorable, jobs that just don't happen to pay as well as being an investment banker or a lawyer.

The catchy phrase "poor door" notwithstanding, let's be clear: To say that teachers, social workers, firefighters aren't good enough to use the same lobby as a Goldman Sachs employee is incredibly wrongheaded and misguided.

wrote on 09/03/14 at 9:01 PM

And, sure, wealthy residents will really want to pay market rate rents in buildings built within NYCHA projects. The editorial is also wrong in that NYCHA projects are already fully integrated within wealthy neighborhoods, and are not confined only to ghettos. Maybe the Crain's people should get out more and walk on the Upper East Side around 92nd Street and 1st Avenue, and throughout the Upper West Side. The separate entrance trend has now been extended to charter schools sharing space in NYC public schools, so that NYC is now beginning to resemble the Jim Crow South before 1964. Glenn in the Bronx, NY.

wrote on 09/04/14 at 10:15 AM

wrote on 09/05/14 at 2:52 PM

"FRED"'s analogy is absurd. The last thing lower-income people need is to be reminded that they're "different". The NYCHA high-rises "failed miserably" because they're dumps, not maintained and not built on a human scale. These are the true components of the demoralizing spiral of poverty. It's really apathy and thoughtlessness that are at work in the "poor doors." BTW, I heard a story about an elderly woman who was mugged at her "poor door," because there was no doorman there monitoring it. So much for "separate but equal."

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